The Shadow
by Sunshine170
Summary: There is a name that she does not remember, but whose sound echoes in the muscle memory of her ear drums and on the tip of her tongue. It's a name that bears a thousand emotions, a name she's taken in happiness and sorrow, in distress and delirium. Can be read as sequel to The Placeholder.


_"Must be hard to develop trust in people when all you've got is yourself. Must get terribly lonely."_

_You lie._

It's the first thing that Olivia thinks to herself.

Yes… Olivia is lonely; she's been lonely for as long as she can remember. But it's not a loneliness that comes from not having anyone in her life.

It's worse, this loneliness, this void, it comes from having known something more that, something better, a companionship that she doesn't remember having but misses sorely.

It's true, she doesn't trust easily. But it's not that she can't…she'd walk blindfolded by the ocean on a stormy night…if he asked her to.

That's how much she's willing to trust him, even if she knows not, who he is.

There is a name that she does not remember, but whose sound echoes in the muscle memory of her ear drums and on the tip of her tongue. It's a name that bears a thousand emotions, a name she's taken in happiness and sorrow, in distress and delirium.

It's a name that has escaped her throat in both pleasure and pain.

Only she can't remember whose it was…

Was there not someone who had walked beside her… with her, all those years, a constant footfall behind hers, someone she'd turn back to and find always, with a reassuring smile?

A smile that moved mountains and hinted at mischief, and radiated happiness and hid pain, one that made her forget for a few brief seconds the bare and naked ugliness of this world and asked her to simply throw her head back and laugh at the absurdity of it all instead.

Were there not hands that held her own once… many times, caring, protecting… soothing.

Warm and slightly calloused, bigger than hers, long fingers making contact with hers, feather light but every bit solid and real.

She can still feel the small weight of them on her shoulder, on her right cheek, weaving through her hair.

Arms, yes… strong and soft at the same time. They held her once, in an embrace that felt like coming home, encircled her waist from behind and kept her steady, while the world around her crashed and burnt. A chest, rock solid, unshakable that she rested her head against, a heart that beat under it warm and alive.

Whose lips were those that touched her so... pressed to her forehead on a day when all that was hope became that promise …a moist half-formed kiss, the ghost of which she still feels on her skin?

The scent of expensive liquor, sharp and intimate, mixed with a waxy hint of Chapstick as the same lips captured hers tenderly, before trailing away to place the softest kiss on her cheek, innocent, chaste almost, with a purposeful naiveté, an uncharacteristic unlearnedness.

She's never been kissed like that.

Someone once thought her beautiful, scars and all….

There is a voice that spoke to her with both lightness and gravitas, mumbled into her ears, sleep-laden and dry, a laugh that made her ears itch and caused her to blush.

Why does she miss being taken care of when no one has ever done that for her? Someone who fed her when she was hungry and held her while she slept but never asked her if she was scared of the dark, who watched out for her when she walked into danger every day but knew her to be strong even when she didn't know it herself. Someone who threw themselves before peril to shield her from the same.

Who is this, she wonders, this sum of sensations, of touch and taste and smell and sound who reminds her of everything she doesn't have, something she's never had, a familiar weight against her back when she sleeps at night and a phantom who occupies the empty passenger seat in her car, an invisible presence that walks with her through the wintry streets of Cambridge, who waits for her at a café , blowing air over the cold glass and letting it mist and then traces a childish heart in the fog with her initials, who sits beside her on a park bench in Harvard yard and doesn't say anything till she feels like speaking.

Has she been at that restaurant before, sat at the corner booth? Did she wear that dress one evening? Tasted a red wine with notes of chocolate and cranberry. Played juvenile games of guessing the life stories of other people on dates.

Did she share a most heavenly slice of Tiramisu at that bakery one late night, with a side of Italian roast coffee and case files?

Did she own those earrings in the display window of that antique store… mother of pearl and silver? They're expensive. She had a pair like that once…. she's sure of it… it was a present. Did she lose them she wonders?

Her life is full of questions she doesn't know the answers to, experiences that live inside her without her having any memory of having them, of familiarities that seem like illusions at times while illusions burn like the brightest truth,

It'd be easier if she were lonely, Olivia thinks as she spends Friday evenings cleaning her apartment inside out, focusing her energies on anything except trying not to miss the mixed aromas of movie theatre popcorn, Italian takeout and Bourbon and the uncomfortable sensations of a bad back rub.

It'd be easier if she was all alone, if there was truly nobody rather than simply the disquieting feeling, to believe she's never known true love, to believe she'll never know anything which is even an approximation of it.

That is a kind of loneliness she's not scared, that she'd known once long ago, that she's willing to embrace again because it simply is… it doesn't her taunt her with the promise of better, burn under her skin with yearning for things that don't exist.

It is an emptiness she would gladly surrender to if only it would make her forget, the memories that live in her flesh and not in her mind… without context, ones that don't trace to any point of origin except throb at the vacuum at her very core, beneath the scar tissue of loss and pain.

Being alone is not the problem really. She's used to it.

Its having to be alone without wanting to, without knowing how to anymore, that's the real curse.


End file.
